The development of attentional control mechanisms in multisensory environments
| Type of publication: | Article |
| Citation: | |
| Journal: | Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience |
| Volume: | 48 |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Pages: | 100930 |
| URL: | https://www.sciencedirect.com/... |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100930 |
| Abstract: | Outside the laboratory, people need to pay attention to relevant objects that are typically multisensory, but it remains poorly understood how the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms develop. We investigated when adult-like mechanisms controlling one’s attentional selection of visual and multisensory objects emerge across childhood. Five-, 7-, and 9-year-olds were compared with adults in their performance on a computer game-like multisensory spatial cueing task, while 129-channel EEG was simultaneously recorded. Markers of attentional control were behavioural spatial cueing effects and the N2pc ERP component (analysed traditionally and using a multivariate electrical neuroimaging framework). In behaviour, adult-like visual attentional control was present from age 7 onwards, whereas multisensory control was absent in all children groups. In EEG, multivariate analyses of the activity over the N2pc time-window revealed stable brain activity patterns in children. Adult-like visual-attentional control EEG patterns were present age 7 onwards, while multisensory control activity patterns were found in 9-year-olds (albeit behavioural measures showed no effects). By combining rigorous yet naturalistic paradigms with multivariate signal analyses, we demonstrated that visual attentional control seems to reach an adult-like state at ∼7 years, before adult-like multisensory control, emerging at ∼9 years. These results enrich our understanding of how attention in naturalistic settings develops. |
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| Added by: | [] |
| Total mark: | 0 |
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